Early adopters of any new hardware are always the ones who get burned the worst by hardware and software glitches, as we've seen over and over again. Some owners of the new 13-inch 2013 Retina MacBook Pros were finding that their keyboards and trackpads would occasionally become unresponsive, and after acknowledging the problem last week, Apple yesterday issued the MacBook Pro Retina EFI Update v1.3 to fix it. The previous, temporary workaround involved putting your computer to sleep and waking it back up, an inconvenient and potentially disruptive bandage.

Owners of the 15-inch 2013 Retina MacBook Pro shouldn't feel neglected just because their keyboards work properly—that laptop is also getting new firmware in the form of the MacBook Pro Retina EFI Update v1.2. This update applies specifically to high-end models with Nvidia's dedicated GeForce GT 750M GPU and "addresses an issue which, in rare cases, may limit the performance of the discrete graphics processor after a system wake or boot." If you have the lower-end version with the Intel-only GPU included, your laptop will still download and install the new firmware (as ours did), but it probably won't alter the laptop's performance.

Apple also issued a patch for Mail.app in OS X 10.9 yesterday, aimed specifically at bugs being experienced by Gmail users of the operating system's built-in mail client.

Andrew Cunningham
Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites

Well it definitely stopped the 10-second keyboard+trackpad freeze I was experiencing whenever I plugged in my external Time Machine drive.

On the flipside, however, it entirely stopped detecting my Time Machine drive when I plug it in directly. However, it shows up fine when it's connected through a USB Hub. That's my normal arrangement so that works for me... But still a bizarre trade-off.

But it's too easy to love this machine and toss aside any gripes. I love mine so much, and it's only been 3 days of ownership.

Hey! Ars Technica is shown using the wrong color scheme in that screenshot! I demand Aurich fix this immediately!

Well now I feel like a fool. I didn't realize you could change color schemes. This is so much better...Although, now I feel like the "Leave your reply" button stands out a bit much since it is the browser's default button style.

Well it definitely stopped the 10-second keyboard+trackpad freeze I was experiencing whenever I plugged in my external Time Machine drive.

On the flipside, however, it entirely stopped detecting my Time Machine drive when I plug it in directly. However, it shows up fine when it's connected through a USB Hub. That's my normal arrangement so that works for me... But still a bizarre trade-off.

But it's too easy to love this machine and toss aside any gripes. I love mine so much, and it's only been 3 days of ownership.

As someone considering buying a rMBP at this very moment that would be kind of show stopper for me as that is simply unacceptable.

As someone considering buying a rMBP at this very moment that would be kind of show stopper for me as that is simply unacceptable.

Well, I think everyone knew all along it was just a launch bug that was going to be firmware patched. There's always something that needs firmware upgrades at the launch of new Mac hardware.

Not to justify that it's OK, of course. Issue should have been caught sooner. But given how widespread it is, it was more a question of when the firmware fix would happened. Happened sooner than I expected.

The machine still performed beautifully.. except for those 10 seconds after plugging in a disk. That happens so rarely for me that it was a trifle, not a showstopper. It's also only for the 13" model if that helps your decision making.

Now to go home and plug in various hard drives and see if it's truly been fixed.

Well it definitely stopped the 10-second keyboard+trackpad freeze I was experiencing whenever I plugged in my external Time Machine drive.

On the flipside, however, it entirely stopped detecting my Time Machine drive when I plug it in directly. However, it shows up fine when it's connected through a USB Hub. That's my normal arrangement so that works for me... But still a bizarre trade-off.

But it's too easy to love this machine and toss aside any gripes. I love mine so much, and it's only been 3 days of ownership.

Are you sure this Time Machine glitch isn´t that OTHER Mac OS X bug (yeah, there´s quite a few of them......) in which hard drives with data are suddenly showing up as "empty"? People have been quite desperate and frantic over that bug over the past week or two.

Many blame Western Digital hard drives and their software for these problems, but I know for a fact that LaCie and Seagate drives have been affected by this bug, too.

Are you sure this Time Machine glitch isn´t that OTHER Mac OS X bug (yeah, there´s quite a few of them......) in which hard drives with data are suddenly showing up as "empty"? People have been quite desperate and frantic over that bug over the past week or two.

Many blame Western Digital hard drives and their software for these problems, but I know for a fact that LaCie and Seagate drives have been affected by this bug, too.

Just sayin´.....

That's a pretty terrifying bug, but I have not been unlucky enough to get that. My problem was that the volume simply wasn't mounting. You wouldn't see the device in Disk Utility at all.

Seems to have resolved itself somehow, the volume now mounts fine no matter how it's plugged in. Back to smooth sailing.